2007-09-07 05:05:06 · 5 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Add-ons
When you format a disk and place a filesystem on it (NTFS, FAT32, UFS, ZFS, RFS, etc...), the filesystem needs some amount of space to manage file storage. As an example, consider a library as a disk. You can store a lot of books in the library but in order to effectively find any of the books you'll need some sort of catalog. The catalog will take up some space (either as a database or the old style paper cards). The space taken up to catalog the books is equivalent to the space you lose on your hard drive.
In the case of the hard drive with a file system, what the filesystem does is maintain a list of the file metadata. This would contain information like where it is located on disk (at the disk sector level, not in a directory structure that you would see at the OS level). You also have access controls (file permissions), date/time stamps, file owner, file segment locations (if the file is "fragmented"), etc...
** Edit **
SAM L - Virtual memory is a pagefile that is stored on the filesystem, not in a separate space on the disk. The space for it is not excluded when you show the disk volume properties.
2007-09-07 05:35:34 · answer #1 · answered by Jim Maryland 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
the bigger your hard drive says it is....the less space you actually have in real math +formatting takes up some space...do the math :) i got lets say a few 320gb's and they format out to ~298gb or something and some other ones but it shouldn't be hard to understand
"Mouse over each item to see how it was calculated.
(Examples of the number of photos, songs, videos and any other files that can be stored on a hard drive are provided for illustrative purposes only. Your results will vary based on file size and format, settings, features, software and other factors.)
One gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes. One terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment."
most companies reference is 1000 bytes and actual referance is 1024 bytes
2007-09-07 05:17:51 · answer #2 · answered by jim 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
This is fairly normal with hard drives, also part of it might be used for system restore.
2007-09-07 06:28:47 · answer #3 · answered by Nemo the geek 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If your hard disk was formatted, there is a reserved partition for the operating system..and it is hidden and cannot be removed..
2007-09-07 05:11:10 · answer #4 · answered by OgieV 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
the system uses some of the mem on the hd 4 verturly mem
2007-09-07 06:34:23 · answer #5 · answered by SAM L 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋